My answer to a friend: There is no success in ministry, only service and moments of celebration. If you choose to minister, expect to be misunderstood. All of the pain people carry will fall upon your brow, and you shall be the stand-in for every ignorant statement...
I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me.
The Bible says that Jesus wept when He saw Mary weeping over the death of her brother. It records that Peter denied Jesus three times on the night of Jesus' arrest. When it dawned on Peter what an abject failure he was, he went out into the night and wept. Tears say...
Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised. Blessed are they who are spiritually impoverished and therefore not so certain about everything that they no longer take in new information. Blessed are those who...
Race will always support "white" supremacy. That's why it was created. It serves no other purpose and cannot be refurbished. Tear it down.
A few years ago, my son attended the funeral of a classmate whose life had been tragically cut short by an automobile accident. Though Stan did not know him very well as they were both relatively new to the school, he said the boy was “soft-spoken and very kind.”...
Love erases the line between giving and receiving. When love is present, we are all just sharing; there are no haves, there are no have nots, just people who need one another. The foolish distinction between who is giving and who is receiving, between who has much and...
I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she...
REPENTANCE is not seen in tears; it is not seen in words; it is not seen in emotion. Repentance is long, slow, consistent change over an extended period of time because it is from the heart outward. Heart change is supernatural work.... REPENTANCE of habituated sin is...
If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself. Something to repair tears in your community. Something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That's what I think a meaningful life is--living not for oneself, but...